The SitePoint Forums have moved.

You can now find them here.
This forum is now closed to new posts, but you can browse existing content.
You can find out more information about the move and how to open a new account (if necessary) here.
If you get stuck you can get support by emailing forums@sitepoint.com

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I'm using @content_for_layout to display various controller actions such
as new, edit, list etc. My problem is that for each controller I want a
specific chunk of content to show up in the sidebar. How can I
accomplish this without altering the layout to look something like this:

...There has to be a much more DRY way of doing that. Perhaps a helper
that takes the controller name as an argument? Other suggestions?

3. I'm used to building searches and sorting mechanisms with PHP that
analyze a $_GET request and display data based on those parametrs. URLs
end up looking like:

Code:

http://example.com/search.php&order=desc&category=foo&author=fred

I have no idea how to build something simple like this with Rails -- can
someone provide some code for me to look at that does just this? I'm
very much a learn by seeing kind of guy and would greatly appreciate it.